Sweep maps: A continuous family of sorting algorithms

We define a family of maps on lattice paths, called sweep maps, that assign levels to each step in the path and sort steps according to their level. Surprisingly, although sweep maps act by sorting, they appear to be bijective in general. The sweep maps give concise combinatorial formulas for the q,t-Catalan numbers, the higher q,t-Catalan numbers, the q,t-square numbers, and many more general polynomials connected to the nabla operator and rational Catalan combinatorics. We prove that many algorithms that have appeared in the literature (including maps studied by Andrews, Egge, Gorsky, Haglund, Hanusa, Jones, Killpatrick, Krattenthaler, Kremer, Orsina, Mazin, Papi, Vaille, and the present authors) are all special cases of the sweep maps or their inverses. The sweep maps provide a very simple unifying framework for understanding all of these algorithms. We explain how inversion of the sweep map (which is an open problem in general) can be solved in known special cases by finding a "bounce path" for the lattice paths under consideration. We also define a generalized sweep map acting on words over arbitrary alphabets with arbitrary weights, which is also conjectured to be bijective.Comment: 21 pages; full version of FPSAC 2014 extended abstrac

Transition matrices for symmetric and quasisymmetric Hall-Littlewood polynomials

We introduce explicit combinatorial interpretations for the coefficients in some of the transition matrices relating to skew Hall-Littlewood polynomials P_lambda/mu(x;t) and Hivert's quasisymmetric Hall-Littlewood polynomials G_gamma(x;t). More specifically, we provide: 1) the G-expansions of the Hall-Littlewood polynomials P_lambda, the monomial quasisymmetric polynomials M_alpha, the quasisymmetric Schur polynomials S_alpha, and the peak quasisymmetric functions K_alpha; 2) an expansion of P_lambda/mu in terms of the F_alpha's. The F-expansion of P_lambda/mu is facilitated by introducing starred tableaux.Comment: 28 pages; added brief discussion of the Hall-Littlewood Q', typos corrected, added references in response to referee suggestion

Deep Foundation Design Near Flood Protection Projects

Flood protection structures (flood walls, pump plants, railroad or vehicular access opening and gatewell structures) have foundations subjected to hydrostatic pressures during flood conditions. The foundation sands below these structures are likely to produce hydrostatic pressure elevation heads which measure higher than the top of ground at the structures. Often the foundations for these structures are deep enough to penetrate the sands into the artesian pressures. Deep foundation design for the flood protection structures utilizes software programs based on load testing in many different types of soils. The load tests used to model soil-structure responses to loading are conducted on moist soils and sometimes saturated soils. Standard load testing does not model the hydrostatic load case. The high river stage will significantly change the foundation resistance for cohesionless materials. A procedure for adjusting the foundation sands subjected to excessive pore pressures is suggested

A Bijective Proof of a Factorization Formula for Specialized Macdonald Polynomials

Let μ and ν = (ν 1, . . . , ν k ) be partitions such that μ is obtained from ν by adding m parts of sizer. Descouens and Morita proved algebraically that the modified Macdonald polynomials H~μ(X;q,t) satisfy the identity H~μ=H~νH~(rm) when the parameter t is specialize to an mth root of unity. Descouens, Morita, and Numata proved this formula bijectively when r ≤ ν k and r∈{1,2}. This note gives a bijective proof of the formula for all r ≤ ν k

New combinatorial formulations of the shuffle conjecture

The shuffle conjecture (due to Haglund, Haiman, Loehr, Remmel, and Ulyanov) provides a combinatorial formula for the Frobenius series of the diagonal harmonics module DHn, which is the symmetric function∇(en). This formula is a sum over all labeled Dyck paths of terms built from combinatorial statistics called area, dinv, and IDes. We provide three new combinatorial formulations of the shuffle conjecture based on other statistics on labeled paths, parking functions, and related objects. Each such reformulation arises by introducing an appropriate new definition of the inverse descent set. Analogous results are proved for the higher-order shuffle conjecture involving ∇m(en). We also give new versions of some recently proposed combinatorial formulas for ∇(Cα) and ∇(s(k,1(n−k))), which translate expansions based on the dinv statistic into equivalent expansions based on Haglund\u27s bounce statistic